


Scars/Cindy's Knee

by Pink_Siamese



Category: No Country for Old Men (2007)
Genre: Belly Dancing, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, One Shot, POV Third Person, Past Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-04
Updated: 2010-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 00:24:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pink_Siamese/pseuds/Pink_Siamese
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tell me about your scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scars

Sometimes she picked a girl out of the audience. A girl if there was one, a woman if there wasn’t. It was usually during her first two sets. In the first two she always wore bright sparkly costumes, and she smiled a lot, big white smiles to accompany the flourish of her arms and the flourishes of the sugar pop Arabic music. Though it was apparent to Chigurh that the dissimilation of it ached somewhere, the first two sets were the most popular. The Friday and Saturday night customers clapped along with the beat, and they tossed their money into the wooden bowl on the floor near her feet. She commanded all of their attention. It charmed them when she took hold of someone and drew her in, taught her to respect the rest of her body with the language of her hips. She conferred upon them the magic and mystery of a dream.

After the long intermission she reappeared for her third set. She drew herself inward, spangles and chiffon and Vanna White smiles left behind: she wore simple blues and wine reds, embroidered cottons, a placid expression, and a girdle of dusty old coins. There was less persuasion in a song born in the middle of a simmering desert, something plucked and hammered out by wizened men in a billowing tent while night drew down in shades of violet. In the third set lived subtlety. Her hands shaped individual notes, drew them out of the song and hung them around her face. The patrons who remained after all the families had gone home for the night ignored the fluttery grace of her hips and took refuge in cheap beer and little bowls of peel-and-eat shrimp.

A shame, really.

Her last set of the night came late. Never more than a handful of people scattered at the round tables and those mired deep in their own affairs.

She wore black silk and polished silver coins. She chose a different song every time, something slow and mechanical and laced through with fluid chants or velvet vocals. She loosened up her long dark hair. She unleashed all of her secrets and let them fill her limbs until they burst. In her fourth set she peeled off her skin-colored body stocking and her elbow-length gauntlets and her necklaces and danced bare.

* * *

 

When Cindy performed she gave herself four names.

Two of them were borrowed from the stage: Adira or Shira or Aziza. _I am Adira, glittering rose of Cairo_, she would think, seconds before moving out into the cleared space at the center of Niko’s dining room. _I am Shira, sultana of the burning sands_. _I am Aziza. _She adorned herself with the familiar melody; _this song is named for me_. She carried this belief. She whirled it around her in an invisible veil, used its strength to lure the customers to her. They always came, magpies that they were. Sold for the price of a cheerful beat, for girlhood memories gilded with Hollywood movies and _I Dream Of Jeannie_. The bead fringe and the sequins felt foreign. She girded her hips with garishness and stepped her way through it.

The third name she lifted from the pages of the Bible. Salome. _I spin with my seven veils. You cannot see them. _Zipporah. _Bride of blood, the daughter of a sheikh_. _Desert royalty._ The words informed the arch and flow of her arms. They canted into her hips._ I am a price above rubies_.

The fourth name was secret. She didn’t know it until she’d slunk out onto the floor, her eyes cutting up the stillness. It whispered in her mind. The silken petals unfolded one at a time: Anger. Desolation. Mourning. Jubilance. Fear. She moved beyond words and melted into colors and images—dead birds, a burning sunset, a rising wave. Remoteness. Red. Courage. An empty desert, determination, a dying flower. Arterial spray. Blue. Tremulous prayer. Ripening fruit. Tenderness. Green. An endless song of water, crumbling bridges, clouds. Rippling heat rising from a summer road. Surrender.

_I am Anger_.

_I am a broken bird_.

_I am Surrender_.

* * *

 

The scars cut rifts in her skin, jagged purple welts. She was young, couldn’t have seen more than twenty-five years and the rest of her skin was smooth and milky white. It bore contrast to the livid ravages borne upon her flesh. The scar tissue spread out from a dense center just below her left ribs, a twisted clutching web, a wine bottle smashed against a wall. Lines carved up her right forearm. Smaller ones, like bits broken off the whole, scattered across her small rounded belly. They could’ve been fallen leaves or leopard spots, stray smoking coals, or flawed jewels.

* * *

 

The second night she walked over and spoke to him.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“So,” she said. “How are you tonight?”

“Tell me about your scars.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“They should be honored with words,” he said.

* * *

 

The song had a slow echoing backbeat. The percussive elements overlapped one another and spread out into the silence, raindrops dripping down, profound and dark. The singer’s voice flowed with the motion, smoky and entranced. Cindy’s arms found the fascination buried in the words and drew it out, shook it loose, furled it tight around herself. Her torso swayed down, down on one side and then up, down on the other. Her hands and wrists slithered. She revolved in a slow gyration, shedding inhibition like old skin.

Her hips swayed forward, snapped back, snapped back.

The backs of her hands skimmed across her cheeks. Her eyes rolled beneath closed lids and her lips parted as a gradual undulation worked itself through her body. Her chest lifted once in delicate punctuation.

On spread knees she collapsed and fell backward and backward and backward, her arms lax at her sides and her spine drawn up into a trembling arch, her belly a bridge that wouldn’t stay still.

* * *

 

Cindy changed into a long flowered print dress and heavy black boots that laced to her knees. She bunched the skirt around her thighs and turned the spare chair around and straddled it, leaning her arms on the wooden back. She pursed her lips and blew hair out of her face.

“The car rolled,” she said. “My mom died.”

Chigurh looked at her.

“I went through the windshield. It took days to remove the glass. They didn’t get all of it, either. Every now and then a sliver works it way out. There’s a tingle.” She tapped her thumb and forefinger together. “Then I just pinch it out.”

He put his chin on his knuckles.

“So.” She bounced her heels off the floor. “You want to get out of here or something?”

“Turn that chair around. Ask me again.”

“What if I don’t feel like it?”

“Then you don’t feel like it.”

Cindy stood up. She shook out her skirt and kept her eyes on his as she picked up the chair, turned it around, and lowered herself onto the seat. She crossed her legs. “And?”

He placed a twenty under the salt shaker.

* * *

 

Once inside her dingy little studio she dropped her knapsack full of jingles on the floor. She walked up to him and stepped her feet apart so the toes of his boots were between hers and tossed her hair out of her face and looked up, fingers brushing against his belt loops. They settled there and she leaned her nose into the hollow of his throat, just breathing there for a moment.

He put a hand on the top of her head, running a slow palm across her hair, and she sighed and brushed her nose along the side of his neck. He picked up a handful of her hair and teased the strands between his fingers, then lifted them to his nose and inhaled. He slathered them across his mouth and she slid a hand onto the back of his neck, pulling her face closer to his. He skimmed his hands over her hips and peered into her lowered lashes. She touched her nose to his. They breathed into each other’s mouths.

She crawled backward onto the bed on the heels of her hands. Her boots left bits of dirt on the bedspread. He took off his boots and climbed over her. She brought her face in close. She hovered there, eyes half-closed, her weight held up on her elbows. He unbuttoned the top of her dress and pushed it down over her shoulders. The work of his hands was methodical. She parted her lips and exhaled, washing his chin with her breath. He put a hand on her belly. She unrolled her back and stretched out on the bed. He left it there and let the weight of his bones, his heat, sink into her flesh.

He thought of all the pain she had endured. Here it was, an echo. Neat rows of pinpricks marked the places where thread had once pulled her together. He lowered his nose and smelled them. Her breath quickened in a burst.

He took hold of her throat. Her nostrils flared and she swallowed, the column of flesh shifting against the span of his thumb and forefinger. He squeezed, but only a little. Her eyelashes fluttered. She looked into his eyes and he was drawn in by the loosening of her pupils, their slow unfurling to the light. Her arteries throbbed, her blood defiant. Her heels pushed against the bed.

He stared into her face and touched her bottom lip with his thumb. The shock of it flew through her body. He let his hand fall from her mouth and she ran her tongue over the abandoned skin.

He pulled up her skirt. His fingers found slick matted hair and heated liquescence clinging to the insides of her thighs. Her mouth twitched. She kept her eyes locked on his. The sweat pushed out of her brow. It gathered into beads, drawing away and sliding down into her temples. She quivered like a well-plucked string. There was a tiny pulse buried in her folds, soft and insistent, like the flutter of a moth’s wings. It clambered at his fingertips. It matched the bold stroke in her throat.

She was so ready. Her water leaked everywhere.

He leaned over her on one elbow. His hand barely moved. She clutched the sheets and her hips writhed, as though she could not get comfortable. She arched her neck. She seized his forearm. She squeezed until the cords popped out along the inside of her wrist and nudged her hips into his fingers. Her mouth opened and her eyes closed. She sucked in a couple of deep ragged breaths, held them, let them out in a rush.

“Look at me,” he said.

She did. Her eyes glazed over. She fought to keep them open, from rolling back into her skull, and at the end of it she arched her back and made a noise and her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes rolled up a little, unfocused on a spot just above his hairline.

She helped him unbutton his jeans and pull them down and off. She took hold of the wrought iron headboard and straddled him.

Those hips were all business.

* * *

 

Cindy walked into the bathroom. Angry red waffle prints creased the backs of her thighs. The boots dwarfed her somehow, made the rest of her body appear smaller and whiter and softer than it was. On the way there she snatched her dress off the floor and draped it over one shoulder. She ran the water into the sink.

“I need to go to work.” Her voice drifted out. “I suppose if you want to steal my shit there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Chigurh stared at the ceiling.

“Help yourself. There’s food if you want it.”

He listened to the sounds of her toilette: splashing water, gargling, flushing, brushing. When came out again she was dressed, her hair looped with an elastic into a loose bun. She smelled like peppermint. She walked across the room and picked up her bag and looped it over her shoulder. She stood by the door and looked at him, her weight canted to one side.

“I mean it,” she said. “I got maybe twenty minutes before I have to be there, and I can’t afford to lose this job. Lousy as it is, stocking shelves overnight. I need it.” She paused, both hands wrapped around her knapsack strap. “You know. It pays the bills.”

“I know.” He sat up.

“Now don’t you look at me like that. Don’t you even.” Her weight shifted from one hip to the other. “It’ll make me want another round, and I can’t afford it.” She grabbed keys off the counter. “I’m going.”

“All right,” he said.

She backed up, reaching behind her, feeling for the door. She turned around when her hand hit the doorknob. She glanced over her shoulder, then turned the knob. The lock disengaged and the door opened a crack. She looked at him once more and pulled open the door and walked out. She did it quickly, as though afraid she’d change her mind.

* * *

 

The medical word for scar is _cicatrix_. Sometimes they are vicious, deforming limbs and crippling the men who own them.

Dictionary entry for the word _scar_:

 

_A mark left by a healed wound, sore, or burn._

_A lasting aftereffect of trouble; a lasting psychological injury resulting from suffering or trauma._

_Any blemish remaining as a trace of or resulting from injury or use._

_Botany: a mark  indicating a former point of attachment, as where a leaf has fallen from the stem._

 

Chigurh pondered this.


	2. Cindy's Knee

The edges blurred and Cindy peered into the mirror with keen interest, watching his limbs and features and shades of color bleed into hers. Points of elbows, loose T-shirt, stiff spikes of blue hair. The clamps pinched her bloodless. Her anticipation lived in her feet. Her nostrils filled with bland hospital scent.

“Breathe.”

It passed through with no effort.

Cindy’s grip on the chair loosened. She watched the needle man in the mirror as he stripped off his black latex gloves. She felt dizzy. Her lip pulsed. The room took a deep breath. She touched metal with her tongue. The barbell was a tiny spear slipped through her lip. The skin around it began to ache.

She tested its resolve.

The little balls were tight, as if they alone bore the weight of memory. As if metal alone could pin down the pleasure of his thumb.

* * *

 

These sorts of places are antithetical to his nature: the crush of humanity, the seething stink of sweat, a cloud of vapors and cigarette smoke writhing at the mercy of the noise, blue notes hammered from a group of young men clustered on a stage. The lights are changing, always changing: blue, yellow, and red, coordinating with the pulse of the place. It bathes the crowd in shadows, draws a mystique across its evolving form. But this place is full of people and it is anonymous. It is also a restaurant and there are good ribs and fried pies, there is fresh cornbread, and he is hungry.

Chigurh is sitting at a table in the rear. People come in through the fire doors, high on the confident belief that they are sneaking in, stealing something, crashing this festival of ephemeral emotion. More than one grope finds its mark in the smoke-laced darkness, more than one breath is strangled with a kiss. They are far too young to be in an establishment that serves alcohol.

Chigurh eats with measured patience. There is a napkin tucked into his collar. He keeps his fingers clean.

Cindy is there. The arm of the gangly blue-haired guy is around her waist and his laughter is amplified by a flood of cheap beer. She huddles against him, as though she cannot stand on her own, but it is obvious to the trained eye that she is the one offering support, she is the one compensating for a lack of balance. The others spread out around them and congregate into a loose, gently swaying knot. They’ve caught the music like a disease. It eats into their limbs and disengages their spines, eroding all the posture crammed there by parents and elementary school teachers. The gangly guy stumbles and no one cares. They are given over to their abandon.

She is standing close to his table. He can smell her sweat mingled with the dead dregs of her perfume.

Chigurh pulls the napkin out of his collar. He wipes his hands with it and reams the sauce out of his fingernails.

While Cindy is stretching her attention between the band on the stage and the milling collection of her friends and the young man beside her, a skinny and sullen thing who cannot hold his liquor well, an individual who is threatening discord with every sip out of the Colt 45 bottle in his hand, Chigurh gathers the hem of her skirt to his palm. He does this with slow circumspection. He settles his chin into his other hand. The lights flash across his face. He releases the fabric and with one fingertip touches the back of her knee. He draws a languid line there. It originates at the tendon on the outside of her thigh, fades out along the inside of her calf.

He looks up at her face and sees her closed eyes and her parted mouth, how her head is lolling back, how her body moves in a slight undulation, a seismic event radiating out from her hips. Her friends dismiss it and blame it on the liquor, or the rapture of the music, or a blink of transient exhaustion. Beneath the skirt her legs are trembling. The gooseflesh on her calf is a switch, the popping and singing nerves of her body are the grid. Her body hums its own tune. Her attention uncouples from the young man at her side.

Chigurh withdraws his hand. She looks over and glances at him, then straightens her skirt and lifts her hair with one arm and looks again, letting her gaze sink into his. Someone bumps into her and she shuffles her feet. Someone passes between them. She holds Chigurh’s eyes in the changing darkness. Someone else slithers by, leading an exodus of drunkards. Cindy leans up on her tiptoes and tightens her arm around her young fellow’s waist. She says something into his ear. The guy laughs and nods, his head loose on his neck. Chigurh catches all of this in flashes. The action is parceled out by the stream of passers-by, images fractioned into sequence by a human strobe.

Cindy slips away.

Chigurh touches the napkin to his lips. He drapes it across his plate. He leans forward a little and fishes his money clip out of his pocket. He thumbs out a bill and anchors it with his water glass.

He gets up and walks out the back door.

* * *

 

“Don’t ruin it with words.”


End file.
